Category: Uncategorized

  • animated Archives – ThrowbackMachine.com

    The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

    The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

    The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an American children’s television series that originally aired on NBC from September 15th, 1968 through February 23rd, 1969. Produced by Hanna-Barbera and based on the classic Mark Twain characters, the program starred its three live-action heroes, Huck Finn (Michael Shea), Becky Thatcher (LuAnn Haslam), and Tom Sawyer (Kevin […]

    The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo

    famous adventures of mr magoo

    The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo is an animated television series, produced by United Productions of America, which aired on NBC for one season (1964 –1965) of 24 episodes.  The television series was based on the original cartoon of the same name, with Jim Backus reprising the voice over of the role he did on […]

    Jonny Quest

    Jonny Quest

    Jonny Quest debuted on ABC at 7:30PM EDT on Friday, September 18th, 1964.  This prime time animated TV series is an American science fiction adventure television series about a boy who accompanies his scientist father on extraordinary adventures.  It was produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions for Screen Gems, and created and designed by comic book artist […]

  • Here Come the Brides – ThrowbackMachine.com

    Here Come the Brides

    Here Come the Brides is an American comedy Western series from Screen Gems that aired on the ABC television network from September 25th, 1968 to April 3rd, 1970.  

    The series was loosely based upon the Mercer GirlsAsa Mercer‘s efforts to bring civilization to old Seattle by importing marriageable women from the east coast of the United States in the 1860s, where the ravages of the American Civil War left towns short of men.
    The producers said the show was inspired by the movie Seven Brides for Seven Brothers in an interview with LA Times TV critic Cecil Smith.
    As a television western, the series rarely featured any form of gunplay, and violence was generally limited to comical fistfights.  This was in keeping with the restrictions on television violence at the time.  Stories highlighted the importance of cooperation, racial harmony, and peaceful resolution of conflict.  Plots were usually a mix of drama and humor.  Being one of the first shows targeted at young women, most of the humor was at the expense of the men, but not particularly bitingly so.
    In the pilot episode, fast-talking logging company boss Jason Bolt (Robert Brown) is faced with a shutdown of his operation as lonely lumberjacks are ready to leave Seattle due to the lack of female companionship.  He promises to find 100 marriageable ladies willing to come to the frontier town (population 152) and stay for a full year.  Sawmill owner Aaron Stempel (Mark Lenard) puts up much of the expense money as a wager that Bolt won’t succeed, with the three Bolt brothers betting their mountain (home to their logging company).
    The Bolts travel to New Bedford, Massachusetts, recruit the women, then charter a mule-ship to take them to Seattle.  The local saloon owner, Lottie (Joan Blondell) takes the women under her wing and becomes a mother figure to them, while Bolt desperately works to keep the women from leaving at the next high tide.  Eventually, the women decide to give Seattle and the loggers a chance.  The ship’s captain, Clancy (Henry Beckman), develops a relationship with Lottie and becomes a regular character in the series.
    Much of the dramatic and comic tension in the first season revolved around Stempel’s efforts to sabotage the deal and take over the Bolts’ holdings.  Stempel became more friendly in the second and final season, which focused more on the development of individual characters and the conflicts associated with newcomers and with people just passing through.  Bobby Sherman and David Soul were propelled to pop stardom as Jason’s brothers, Jeremy and Joshua.  Jeremy took a prominent role, not only as the boyfriend of Candy Pruitt (Bridget Hanley), the beautiful leader of the brides, but also as a young man struggling with a conversation-stopping stammer. In one episode, he is temporarily cured of his impediment, following coaching by a traveler who has come to Seattle.  Upon discovering that his benefactor is actually a con artist, his faith is shaken so deeply that the stammer returns.
  • The Alcoa Hour – ThrowbackMachine.com

    The Alcoa Hour

    The Alcoa Hour is an American anthology television series that was aired live on NBC from 1955 to 1957. The series was sponsored by Alcoa.

    Like the Philco Television Playhouse and Goodyear Television Playhouse that had preceded it, The Alcoa Hour was a one-hour live dramatic anthology series presenting both original stories and adaptations of popular works.  The three series were essentially the same, with the only real difference being the name of the sponsor.

    The series alternated weeks in the same time slot with the Goodyear Television Playhouse until both series ended in 1957.

    One of the series’ memorable episodes was the December 23rd, 1956, telecast of The Stingiest Man in Town, a musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, starring Basil Rathbone as Scrooge and Martyn Green as Bob Cratchit.
    The show garnered press in February 1956 for actor Lloyd Bridges’ emotional performance in an episode titled “Tragedy in a Temporary Town”, directed by Sidney Lumet. During the performance, Bridges inadvertently slipped some profanity in while ad-libbing.  Although the slip of the lip generated hundreds of complaints, the episode won a Robert E. Sherwood Television Award, with Bridges’ slip being defended even by some members of the clergy. The episode, during which an innocent Latino man is targeted by a mob for a sexual crime, was cited by the Anti-Defamation League as “the best dramatic program of the year dealing with inter-ethnic group relations.”

     

    Tragedy in a Temporary Town news clip

     

     

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  • Barney Miller – ThrowbackMachine.com

    Barney Miller

    Barney Miller is an American situation comedy television series set in a New York City police station in Greenwich Village.  The series originally was broadcast from January 23rd, 1975, to May 20th, 1982, on ABC.  It was created by Danny Arnold and Theodore J. Flicker.  Noam Pitlik directed the majority of the episodes.

    Barney Miller takes place almost entirely within the confines of the Detectives’ Squad Room and Captain Barney Miller’s adjoining office of New York City’s fictional 12th Precinct, located in Greenwich Village.  A typical episode would feature the detectives of the 12th bringing in several complainants and/or suspects to the squad room.  Usually there are two or three separate subplots in a given episode, with different officers dealing with different crimes.  Once a year, there would be an episode which featured one or more of the detectives outside of the walls of the 12th Precinct, either on a stakeout or at one of their homes.



  • Appointment With Adventure – ThrowbackMachine.com

    Appointment With Adventure

    Appointment with Adventure is a half-hour adventure dramatic anthology television series broadcast live on CBS from 1955-1956.  The program has no host.  It aired at 10 p.m. EST on the Sunday evening schedule between the better known Alfred Hitchcock Presents and What’s My Line?  It ran opposite The Loretta Young Show on NBC and Life Begins at Eighty, a panel discussion series hosted by Jack Barry on ABC.

    The series aired fifty-three episodes, having premiered on April 3rd, 1955, near the end of the regular 1954-1955 television season.  It ran throughout the spring and summer of 1955 and began its fall run on October 2nd, 1955, concluding new segments on April 1st, 1956.  In effect, the series ran for a full year without the summer rebroadcast period standard for most programs.
    Episodes centered upon wars in U.S. history as well as dramatizations from events from many places throughout the world, then and in the past.  In the episode which aired on May 1st, 1955, Polly Bergen, Dane Clark, and Hugh Reilly starred in “Rendezvous in Paris.”  Tony Randall and Jack Klugman, fifteen years prior to their television roles as Felix Unger and Oscar Madison, respectively, in ABC’s The Odd Couple, appeared with Gena Rowlands in the September 4th, 1955, episode entitled “The Pirate’s House.”  Randall also appeared two months earlier in the Appointment with Adventure episode “Caribbean Cruise.”
    John Cassavetes, husband of Gena Rowlands, appeared with Elizabeth Montgomery, later star of ABC’s Bewitched, and Tina Louise, later of CBS’s Gilligan’s Island, in the segment “All Through the Night” on February 5th, 1956.  Montgomery had also appeared in the November 20th, 1955, episode “Relative Stranger.”  John Ericson and Dorothy Malone, later star of Peyton Place, appeared on the New Years Day, 1956, episode “Mutiny.”  Jason Robards appeared with Christopher Plummer and Constance Ford in the March 18th, 1956, episode entitled “A Thief There Was.” 
    The plethora of guests included several other well-known names and some future stars who were beginning their show business, including Philip Abbott, Edie Adams, Gene Barry, Carl Betz, Neville Brand, Patricia Breslin, Geraldine Brooks, Macdonald Carey, Robert Clary, James Daly (“A Touch of Christmas” on December 25th, 1955), Gloria DeHaven (“The Snow People”), Eva Gabor, James Gregory, Pat Hingle, Henry Hull, Kim Hunter, Henry Jones, Louis Jourdan, Don Keefer, Phyllis Kirk, June Lockhart, Jack Lord, Lin McCarthy (four episodes), Peggy McCay, Biff McGuire (episode entitled “Number Seven, Hangman’s Row”), Robert Middleton, Elizabeth Montgomery, Paul Newman, Patrick O’Neal, Patti Page (in “Paris Venture”), Betsy Palmer, Neva Patterson, Mala Powers, Charlotte Rae, Erik Rhodes, and Janice Rule.  Rod Serling, before his The Twilight Zone, wrote the episode “The Faithful Pilgrimage”, which stars Theodore Bikel.  It aired on April 17th, 1955.  Forrest Tucker, later of ABC’s F Troop, appeared in the series finale with the unusually titled episode, “Two Falls for Satan.”
  • sports Archives – ThrowbackMachine.com

    Gillette Cavalcade of Sports

    Gillette Cavalcade of Sports

    The Gillette Cavalcade of Sports is an American network radio program and later television program that included broadcasts of a variety of sports, although it is primarily remembered by many for its focus on boxing. The diversified field of sporting events continued onto television, reportedly including at least two golfing tournaments as well (beginning in 1958) with football’s Rose Bowl.  With all of this, however, […]

  • Our Miss Brooks – ThrowbackMachine.com

    Our Miss Brooks

    Our Miss Brooks is an American situation comedy starring Eve Arden as a sardonic high school English teacher.  It began as a radio show broadcast on CBS from 1948 to 1957.  When the show was adapted to television (1952–56), it became one of the medium’s earliest hits.

    Our Miss Brooks was considered groundbreaking for showing a woman who was neither a scatter-brained klutz nor a homebody, but rather a working woman who transcended the actual or assumed limits to women’s working lives of the time.  Connie Brooks was considered a realistic character in an non-glamorized profession (she often joked, for example, about being underpaid, as many teachers were at the time) who showed women could be competent and self-sufficient outside their home lives without losing their femininity or their humanity.  The show  ran for 130 episodes on television and won an Emmy award before it was cancelled in 1956.
  • Then Came Bronson – ThrowbackMachine.com

    Then Came Bronson

    Then Came Bronson is an American adventure/drama television series starring Michael Parks that aired on NBC from 1969 to 1970, and was produced by MGM Television.  The series, created by Denne Bart Petitclerc, began with a movie pilot on Monday, March 24th, 1969.  The series was approved for one year and began its first run on September 17th, 1969.

    The series features Parks as the protagonist, James “Jim” Bronson, a newspaperman who becomes disillusioned after the suicide of his best friend Nick (Martin Sheen) and, after a heated argument with his editor, “working for the man.”
    In order to renew his soul, Bronson becomes a vagabond searching for the meaning of life and seeking the experiences life has to offer (as revealed in the series pilot).  During his travels, he shares his values with the people he meets along the way and lends a helping hand when he can.  Bronson rides a Harley-Davidson Sportster motorcycle and, as such, he was viewed by some as a modern version of the solitary cowboy wandering the American west.  The motorcycle had previously been sold to Nick by Bronson.  After it is left at the suicide scene by his friend, Bronson buys it back from the widow.
    Curiously, though the opening promises a journey of self-discovery, the premise of each episode is that Bronson enters someone else’s life at a crucial point and acts as a catalyst for change.  When Bronson encounters an Amish community, for example, a local boy becomes enraptured by the outside world and steals Bronson’s motorcycle to run off to Reno, Nevada.  In another episode, located in Reno, Nevada, Bronson meets his cousin Eve on her wedding day and lends her money for the wedding service, but she runs off to the casinos and blows it.
    The first three episodes, including the end credits scenes, were shot in and around Jackson, Wyoming.  The premier pilot movie was also shown at the town’s then only theatre to give the locals a sense of what the series was about, since they were shooting in town and at local area popular spots.  Bronson is committed to pacifism and often redirects an antagonist’s anger into self-examination.  Always, like a true catalyst, he rolls out of every episode unchanged.
    The show had obvious similarities to the early 1960s series Route 66 (in which Michael Parks guest-starred in one episode).  It was also sometimes erroneously described as a knock-off of the movie Easy Rider, but it actually preceded the release of that movie.



  • The Lawrence Welk Show – ThrowbackMachine.com

    The Lawrence Welk Show

    The Lawrence Welk Show is an American televised musical variety show hosted by big band leader Lawrence Welk.  The series aired locally in Los Angeles for four years (1951–55), then nationally for another 27½ years via the ABC network (1955–71).

    In 1951, The Lawrence Welk Show started as a local program on KTLA-TV in Los Angeles, flagship station of the Paramount Television Network.  The original show was broadcast from the since-demolished Aragon Ballroom at Venice Beach.
    The show made its national TV debut on ABC Television on July 2nd, 1955, and was initially produced at the Hollywood Palladium, moving to the ABC studios at Prospect and Talmadge in Hollywood shortly afterwards. For 23 of its 27 years on the air, the show would originate there.
    The 1965-66 season was taped at the Hollywood Palace since that was ABC’s only West Coast TV studio at the time equipped for live or taped color production; Welk had insisted that the show go color in 1965 because he believed that being broadcast in color was critical to the continued success of his program.  Once a couple of studios at the ABC Prospect and Talmadge facilities had been converted to color in 1966, the show moved back there.
    The show aired on ABC until 1971.  When the show was canceled by the head of programming there, Welk formed his own production company and continued airing the show, on local stations and, often from 7 to 8 P.M. Eastern time on Saturdays over some of the ABC affiliates on which he had previously appeared, along with some stations affiliated with other networks.
    When the show began, it was billed as the Dodge Dancing Party from 1955 to 1959.  During 1956–59, Lawrence Welk was broadcast two nights per week.  The second show’s title was Lawrence Welk’s Top Tunes and New Talent Show (1956–58) and then Lawrence Welk’s Plymouth Show, after another Chrysler vehicle (1958–59).  The Plymouth show was the first American television program to air in stereophonic sound. Due to the fact that stereophonic television had not yet been invented (it would be 25 more years before it would become standard), ABC instead simulcast the show on its radio network, with the TV side airing one audio channel and the radio side airing the other; viewers would tune in both the TV and the radio to achieve the stereophonic effect.  Starting with the 1959–60 season the two shows were merged into The Lawrence Welk Show, reverting to monaural broadcasts.
    The primary sponsor of The Lawrence Welk Show was Dodge (automobile marque), later to be followed by Geritol (a multivitamin), Sominex (sleep aid), Aqua Velva (aftershave), Serutan (laxative), Universal Appliances (manufacturer of home appliances), Polident (a denture cleanser), Ocean Spray (fruit juice) and Sinclair Oil (automobile fuel) served as associate sponsors for a short time.